---Huns---

#CIVILOPEDIA ENTRY (Thamis)


#RACE_Huns
^The Huns are $LINK<industrious and militaristic=GCON_Strengths>. 
^They build $LINK<???>.    
^
^   
By about 420 AD, a Hunnic Confederacy had been established, enriched by plunder and tribute, by the 
hiring out of mercenaries to the Romans, and by the extortion of what can only be called protection money. 
Their Empire stretched from the Baltic to the Caspian when, in 445, one of their two joint-rulers murdered 
his colleague and seized control of the Confederacy. The murdered man was named Bleda and his murderer  was his 
own younger brother, Attila.
^
The Empire he inherited was built on and sustained by booty. So it was that the  God of War's chosen one launched 
an immediate invasion of Eastern Europe. This was in 447 AD, a time when the Empire was already suffering a 
series of natural catastrophes - earthquakes, pestilence and famine - and it is little wonder that the by now 
Christian Romans saw the Huns as the very Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
^
The victories of this period may have more to do with Roman demoralisation than any inherent military superiority 
of the invaders. The Huns fought as horse archers, though their forces were much bolstered by the heavy cavalry 
of their Germanic subjects. In fact, the composition of the opposing armies would have been remarkably similar, 
with large numbers of Germans and even Huns to be found on both sides. The Roman Army of the time was little 
more than an assembly of  allied or mercenary tribes, with barely an Italian amongst them.
^
During the next three years, Attila's men lived off the booty and tribute of the Eastern Empire before turning, 
in 450 AD, to the West. The Western Empire at this time was nominally ruled by the Emperor Valentinian III but 
was effectively controlled by the warlord, Atius. It was Atius who assembled a confederacy with which to 
confront the Hunnic threat. This was composed of  Franks, Visigoths and his own Romano-Germanic army.
^
#DESC_RACE_Huns
The two forces met in 451 at the great battle of the Catalaunian Fields, near Chlons-sur-Marne. It was a 
brutal battle of little tactical subtlety, barbarian against barbarian, and by the end of the day Atius 
had the upper hand. He could have finished Attila once and for all but he did not. Knowing that, with the 
Huns destroyed, his Visigothic allies would overrun the whole of Gaul, he let the Huns escape. It was a 
judgment which the citizens of Italy would bitterly rue.
^
For Attila now led his horde across the mountains to Milan (Mediolanum), the Roman capital. He spread 
devastation across the whole of northern Italy and came to the walls of Rome itself. There is a story 
that  Pope Leo persuaded Attila to spare the city and that the great king, in terror of the Cross, retreated. 
This, however, is Christian propaganda. The truth is that Attila had heard of a threat from the Eastern Empire 
and turned back to deal with it.
^
He planned to destroy Constantinople, and ensure that the Romans would remain in thrall to him forever. But in 
453, lying in a drunken stupor, Attila suffered a  nose bleed. The blood trickled down the back of his throat 
and choked him to death. For a man who had boasted that 'where my horse has trodden, no grass grows' it was a 
curiously anti-climactic death. The Empire he had created did not survive him.
- http://www.fernweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mf/huns.htm
